“Stress-Busters and Birthdays”

By Caciques Haley McCalpin and Arben Ukperaj

The final match: Lindsey versus Damian, cheers erupting on either side, Lindsey throws the winning hand. Tonight at our dinner circle, we decided to do a “stress-buster” in attempt to relieve stress from the students and bring our community closer together. Each person went around the circle playing different people in a two out of three rock-paper-scissors game with the losing person cheering the winner on. By the end, half of the community supported Lindsey while the other supported Damian. We found this was a great way to incorporate a fun activity into our circle while taking the students’ minds off of their workload.

We had began the day singing Happy Birthday to Bronte at morning circle and then dispersed into our morning exercise with the North dorms swimming the triangle cut and the South running the inner-loop. After a morning of classes, including History, Math, and Literature, we had a four and a half hour block for research in the afternoon. Though some students were nervous about the extended period of time, many came back with exciting stories and experiences that they had never encountered before. Students learned the overview of their projects and explored different topics to research over the course of the semester. Following dinner, we had a guest speaker, Tom Stewart, who spoke to us about food webs and food chains and how you can draw this information from the coral reefs surrounding us. As an ecologist from Ontario studying the food webs and chains of the Great Lakes, he had interesting information which he compared and contrasted to the webs and chains found on the coral reefs in places such as the Bahamas. Many students were intrigued by what he had to say and hope to apply it to their research groups throughout the semester. We closed the evening with an info session about our first settlement day tomorrow. After a humorous and informative skit from Brady, students were informed about do’s and don’ts of settlement day and how to effectively interact with the locals in their communities. We are all excited to get to know the people of Eleuthera better and will hopefully get a chance to interview them at some point during the day. After a long day of classes and excitement, we are all ready for a good night’s sleep for tomorrow’s adventure.